


Striking Roots

by DameRuth



Series: Flowers [3]
Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Human/alien relationship stuff, Hurt/Comfort, Kinda-sorta OT3, Multi, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-11
Updated: 2020-06-11
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:21:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24666799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DameRuth/pseuds/DameRuth
Summary: After the Doctor suffers a terrible shock in the Flowers!verse, it's up to Rose and Jack to comfort him and each other.[Continuing the Teaspoon imports, originally posted 2008.12.11 - another personal fave, if only for the fact that I really had to wrestle with it, but I think I got some of my best prose writing out if it in the end.]
Relationships: Jack Harkness/Rose Tyler, Ninth Doctor/Jack Harkness/Rose Tyler
Series: Flowers [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/14017
Comments: 1
Kudos: 25





	1. Chapter 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written as a [Support Stacie auction-winner](http://www.majiksfanfic.com/phpbb/viewforum.php?f=101&sid=2c59481e247d67f8ac970785498c7835) fic for wmr/wendymr and Measi, posted publicly with their kind permission. The request was: _"Flowersverse, pre-POTW and post-that first night together. The Doctor's hurt so the other two combine to comfort him, leading to fluffy smut :)"_  
>    
>  Now, given the "rules" of the Flowers!verse, for those who have been following along at home, that's almost an impossible request: in this 'Verse, Nine is never sexually compatible with *either* of his companions ("Hothouse Flowers" being the first time that barrier is broken, and that between Ten and Jack); the "fluff" factor is also hard to work in.  
>    
>  I burnt incense (amber and Green Champa, if you must know, my two faves) and prayed to the Goddess of Plotbunnies; in return she sent me the following story. May it please my generous auction winners!  
>    
>  The second installment should be up fairly soon -- I hope! Many thanks to aibhinn for spiffy, speedy beta-ing!! (Any delays are my fault, not hers!)

"A watch," Jack, said staggering to his feet as echoes of the gigantic explosion they'd just escaped bounced off the bare rock walls of the canyon. He opened his clenched fist and glared, disbelieving, at the small, silver-gleaming mechanism, decorated with circles and spirals, that he'd managed to end up holding. "All of this for a fucking _watch_!" His voice cracked with something between rage and anguish, compressing all the fear and horror, the deaths and destruction of the last few hours into a single word.  
  
Rose picked herself up off the rough, gravelly ground next to him and joined Jack in staring at his prize. It didn't seem possible that something so small and apparently ordinary had destroyed an entire archaeological research facility. Or, more accurately, had caused the scientific team stationed there to ultimately destroy each other in the fight to possess it. It was just an Earth-style pocketwatch, archaic and anachronistic for the current, twenty-eighth century.  
  
The only unusual thing about it was the pattern on its cover, which tweaked Rose's memory with its familiarity. That, and, ever so faintly, the hint of a song and a Voice, just at the edge of perception. It wasn't physical; it caught the mind, filled the patterned silver with hidden meanings, made promises, and _called_ . . .  
  
A scuff, and the Doctor, who had been just ahead of them in the mad dash to exit the doomed building, was at their side. He grabbed the watch roughly from Jack's hand, breaking the subtle spell that had begun to hold both humans entranced. Jack made a low noise of protest, and his hand made a small, abortive gesture, as if to follow the lost treasure.  
  
"Leave it," the Doctor growled, his voice low and rough, harsher than the barren gravel of this long-dead world. His eyes were almost as silver-pale as the watch's case, blazing with rage and horror and a gaping, bottomless sorrow. Rose knew none of it was directed at her, and even at his most terrible the Doctor didn't scare her, but she still had to look away from that intensity. Now she realized what the pattern was.  
  
"What's it say, the writing?" she asked, daring to meet his eyes again.  
  
There was nothing human left in his face, but her heart broke for him all the same.  
  
"It doesn't matter anymore," he replied in that same gravel-rough voice, his tone as final as a slammed door.  
  
He stepped back from his companions and closed his fingers over the watch. His grip tightened convulsively and there was a small, sharp _crunch_ of metal and crystal; a brief halo of luminous golden mist seeped from between the Doctor's fingers, evaporating almost as soon as it had formed. The Doctor turned away and flung a glittering arc of gears and fragments as far from where he stood as possible. Then he began walking.  
  
"Doctor . . .?" Jack began, sounding shaken. The Doctor didn't respond. Rose and Jack might not exist anymore for all the notice he gave them.  
  
The two humans traded glances before jogging to catch up. Jack hesitated, then slipped off the shoulder-strap of his scavenged pulse rifle, letting it drop to the ground, abandoned; there was no further use for it, and the Doctor didn't care to have such things on board his ship.  
  
When they came level with the Doctor, Jack took one look at the Time Lord's set, craggy profile and dropped back a half-step, content to keep a respectful distance. Rose matched the Doctor's stride and reached a tentative hand towards his. While he didn't look at her, his fingers slipped between hers without resistance. Together, they walked in silence to the TARDIS.  
  
Behind them, a second explosion bloomed in the wreckage of what had once been the only human habitation on the planet, but nobody bothered to look back.  
  
\---  
  
Rose dropped the Doctor's hand when they passed through the door into the control room. Freed, he strode up the ramp and immediately began flipping switches and working controls, still in that agonizing silence. Rose wished he'd start talking, or swearing, or crying, or screaming or _something_ , since she knew whatever had just happened was connected to his lost home and the War, and it was ripping him up inside, but she found she couldn't bring herself to speak first.  
  
Jack closed the door behind them and then his big, warm human hand closed gently around hers. She gave it a grateful little squeeze, and glanced up into his face. He looked grim and worried, none of his usual grinning and laughter now. He seemed as unwilling as she to speak.  
  
The Time Rotor paused, in a way that told Rose the Doctor had the ship locked in a holding pattern within the Vortex. She started up the ramp towards him, pulling Jack along by their still joined hands. The Doctor glanced in their direction, registering their approach, but his face was expressionless. He turned away before they could reach him and exited through the door that led to the rest of the TARDIS. It swung closed behind him, and Rose's stomach clenched when she saw he'd left a handprint in blood where he'd pushed the door open. He must have cut himself on the watch when he crushed it against his bare skin.  
  
She was no more than three steps behind the Doctor, but when she pushed open the door the long corridor, stretching off into what looked like infinity, was completely empty.  
  
\---  
  
It was the TARDIS's doing, Rose was sure; the ship was hiding the Doctor, reworking her internal structure to give him the privacy he . . . wanted? Needed? Whatever the reason, Rose was absolutely certain she and Jack wouldn't see the Doctor again until he was ready to be seen. She felt a twinge of hurt and rejection, but the reaction to the last hour's events was starting to kick in, and it was getting hard to concentrate. She realized she was shivering in long, slow, whole-body shudders. There was a faint adrenalin tremor in Jack's hand where it gripped hers, and his grip was tighter than it had been.  
  
Around them, the TARDIS's usual hum was muted, infected by the creeping weight of grief and silence that the Doctor carried with him, the ship echoing her master's emotions as she so often did. The sensation was eerie, like being deep underwater or buried in heavy snow: all sound was muffled and indistinct, the air feeling thick enough for Rose's jaw to work reflexively, trying to pop her ears and equalize pressure.  
  
She made herself move forward, for lack of anything better to do, and the first door on the right was her bedroom. She grasped the doorknob with her free hand, and looked back at Jack, uncertain. The uncertainty vanished when she met his eyes.  
  
He followed her through the door, and they pivoted around their joined hands into each others' arms almost as smoothly as if executing a dance step. Rose wrapped her arms tightly around Jack, burying her face against his shoulder, breathing in the scent of sweat and smoke that clung to him, clinging to his warmth and the solid, muscular bulk of him. He embraced her no less desperately, then they were kissing each other, and Rose knew she had to have his warmth and strength and flesh, all of it, as quickly as possible.  
  
The oppressive, deep-water silence still pressed in closely, but they didn't need words as they began a headlong rush to bare skin and joined bodies; there was no real foreplay, but then, neither of them needed it. Rose's horizons had been considerably broadened by sharing a bed regularly with Jack, but there was no finesse to this -- it was fierce and fast and basic, a raw celebration of continued survival, and exactly what both of them needed.  
  
She made a small noise in the back of her throat when he entered her fully, on his second thrust, but for the most part they made no more noise than the gasp of their breathing and the friction and impact of skin on skin. It seemed wrong -- somehow disrespectful -- to break the timeship's eerie hush.  
  
When she reached the moment of inevitability, Rose slid her hand up Jack's back, resting her fingertips just above his shoulder blade. One of the most difficult bedroom adjustments she'd had to make involved Jack's fondness for being marked by his partner: a bite, a bruise, a scratch -- he considered such things badges of pride, proof that he'd taken another person out of themselves to the point of violence. He never showed Rose anything but the greatest care in return, correctly judging that she didn't enjoy mixing her pleasure with pain, but it still took an effort for her to give him what he wanted.  
  
When her orgasm hit, she dug her fingernails into the flesh of his back, arching her fingers like claws, and ripping them down his back with all her strength. She was dimly aware of the hissing intake of his breath as her body was wracked by spasms so powerful it seemed like her muscles were trying to tear free from her bones. Jack, always a dream-perfect lover, managed to match the timing of his thrusts to her contractions, encouraging her body to wring itself out, leaving her limp and gasping when she finished.  
  
A few hard thrusts later, Jack's head snapped back, his teeth bared in a silent snarl that transformed his familiar, handsome features into something wild and strange. When his own pleasure released him, he flopped forward, limply, catching most of his weight to one side on his elbow. He stopped gasping for air long enough to brush a light kiss across Rose's lips, then he roll-flopped to the side, landing on his back. Both of them spent a couple of minutes just breathing, then Rose wriggled closer to Jack, shifting onto her side. His arm reached around automatically to cradle her shoulders as she rested her head on his chest, pressing her ear close to hear the galloping thunder of his heartbeat.  
  
_Alive,_ they said to each other in silence, simply by being close. _We're still alive, and it's_ good.  
  
The first few times they'd worked off the stress of a dangerous adventure in this way, Rose had been secretly worried. It had seemed excessive, almost unhealthy, and very much outside her previous experiences back home on Earth. Now, though, her and Jack together was nearly as natural as breathing, and home was so far away it might as well not exist at all.  
  
After a few more minutes, they shifted into more relaxed positions. Jack, smiling tenderly, straightened Rose's carved-coral pendant, which had slipped behind her neck, bringing it around to the front of its chain to rest between her breasts, sliding the chain so the clasp (which always worked itself 'round to the front) was once more in back. Rose smiled in return, and used her fingertips to brush the dark hair back from Jack's sweat-damp forehead, keeping the nails carefully away from the skin. Jack kissed the palm of her hand, then they traded one more full-on kiss as a farewell until waking.  
  
Within minutes, they were both sleeping with the complete abandon of exhaustion.  



	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Whew! One auction fic down, one to go. ;)

When they woke, the air was still thick and quiet, but seemed a little lighter than it had been.  
  
"Morning," Rose whispered, still reluctant to make more noise than necessary. She gave Jack a smile that felt hopelessly dopey, but he seemed charmed -- or at least he smiled back.  
  
"Morning," he whispered back.  
  
By mutual consent, their first stop was Rose's en suite bathroom for cleanup. Rose, delayed by finding an extra towel for Jack, entered to find him studying his back in the mirror, craning his neck to get the fullest possible view of the marks Rose had left him. The four parallel lines, starting just above his shoulder blade and describing a curving line down his back and ribs, were crusted with dried blood and there were dark smears on the pale skin between them. Rose bit her lip, suddenly afraid she'd overdone it, but Jack grinned as he took the towel and hung it on the rack next to Rose's own.  
  
"Wow," was his only whispered comment, accompanied by a wiggle of his eyebrows.  
  
"Yeah, wow," she responded, running an affectionate hand along his undamaged side as they moved to the shower.  
  
The shower involved only washing, with the added luxury of someone else present to scrub one's back and apply shampoo and conditioner. Rose was as gentle as possible cleaning the scratches she'd made in Jack's skin, trying not to break the fragile scabs. When they were done and dried, he suffered her slathering on a generous batch of the futuristic gel that both cleaned and sealed wounds, though he obviously didn't seem to think it was necessary.  
  
Dressed, they crept out of Rose's room -- Jack no less hesitantly than Rose; she was secretly relieved to see the oppressive atmosphere was getting to him, too. In the corridor the air was much heavier than it had seemed in the bedroom, still with that underwater/snow-muffled sensation. Rose knew that meant the Doctor, wherever he was, was still hurting, and she felt guilty for having taken pleasure and rest while he was clearly getting neither. She took a few steps heading deeper into the ship, with the goal of searching for the missing Time Lord, but the air thickened almost perceptibly in front of her, turning into something approaching a physical barrier.  
  
Jack, just behind her, caught her hand in his. "I don't think we're supposed to," he whispered in her ear, the most words either of them had spoken at once since they're returned to the TARDIS.  
  
Rose, still looking down the long, long corridor, hoping against hope to see the tall, dark figure of the Doctor coming 'round a corner in their direction, nodded reluctantly and let Jack tug her toward another door nearby. It turned out to be the galley, and she realized she was ravenously hungry. Reluctantly deciding it would serve no purpose to suffer until the Doctor chose to reappear, she joined Jack in preparing a meal. The activity was familiar enough they could work in tandem without needing more than a word, a glance, or a gesture to coordinate. As always, they prepared enough food for three; the Doctor had a gift for turning up just as they finished work and settled down to eat, to the point where it was an unspoken tradition.  
  
She and Jack sat down to their meal, but the Doctor still hadn't made an appearance by the time they'd finished. They traded a glance, and Jack shrugged. They cleared their own dishes and set the galley to rights. Still no Doctor. Eventually, there was no task remaining to provide an excuse for them to stay. They left the Doctor's portion of the meal on the table; it felt to Rose like setting out a hopeful bowl of food for a missing pet, with no guarantee the offering would ever be accepted. The comparison could have been amusing, but wasn't.  
  
She and Jack re-entered the main corridor together, hand-in-hand again. A quick check of her bedroom revealed the bedclothes twisted in disarray, still smudged with the grime and ash of yesterday’s adventure, along with a few smears of Jack's blood. The TARDIS was obviously occupied with more important things than housekeeping.  
  
Rather than changing out the bed by hand, they took the path of least resistance and moved to Jack's room (conveniently located next door to Rose's), and eventually Jack's bed, where they made love again. It was very different this time, being less about swift release than about companionship and passing the time. Eventually the slow, easy patterns transitioned naturally to sleep for both still-exhausted humans.  
  
\--  
  
The Doctor paced the deep corridors of the TARDIS like a caged panther, momentarily silenced. His throat was raw and aching from the grief he'd finally dared to voice, outside his human companions' hearing. Split tones and chords no longer came easily to him, but they were the only form of speech that allowed him to fully express his sense of loss and injustice.  
  
He hadn't been alone after all, not till today.  
  
One of his kind had fled the War and survived in hiding, at least for a little while, taking the form of some other creature and hiding their true nature -- what humans would consider their “soul” -- in an ordinary-looking watch protected by a perception filter.  
  
Protected too well; the recall sequence was never triggered, the watch never opened during the lifespan of the individual who had once been a Time Lord. That individual had died a natural death for their host species of choice . . . but the watch had continued on, even after the proper vessel for its stored information had gone. Over all the centuries (possibly millenia), the watch and the essence it contained survived as a ghost; an echo; a cut flower continuing to bloom even after, for all intents and purposes, it is dead.  
  
Slowly the signal degraded, until, by the time the watch had been discovered by the ill-fated archaeological team, not even a name or gender had survived. Only the desire to find the proper host and _live_ remained, the half-decayed pattern singing out to any receptive sentient mind, the perception filter long since worn away. And so the human team had found it, thinking it to be an ordinary artifact . . . until they began to hear its song: promising freedom, knowledge, and a whole array of other enticements that no longer had any meaning.  
  
All the same, the watch's song had been enough to warp and infect the unfortunate, isolated group of humans who'd uncovered it. No longer an implement of resurrection, the watch instead had spurred those unlucky people to fight to the death to possess something that could never have properly been theirs.  
  
It was then -- and only then -- that the TARDIS, attuned to the vibrations of Time Lord power, became aware of the possible survival and guided the Doctor there. Only then, centuries after there was anything he could do to bring another of his own kind to full awareness, to keep himself from being anything other than utterly alone.  
  
The original owner of the watch had betrayed their kind; their courage had clearly broken in the face of the War's horrors. Only a coward would have fled from defending Gallifrey from the Daleks.  
  
The Doctor didn't care.  
  
To find someone, _any_ one to ease the pain of isolation . . . for that, any cowardice, any crime, could have been forgiven.  
  
Could have been.  
  
The Doctor wanted to howl again, to rage with the full power of his freed voice. Now the wave of probability was collapsed and reality written in stone, thanks to his presence and participation. No going back once a person had become part of a timeline, whether that person was a human girl seeking to save her father, or a Time Lord saving the only other survivor of his kind.  
  
Whomever it had been was dead; that was the only way their entrapped soul could have continued to be found -- and freed to dissolve naturally, for what little good that did -- by the Doctor. Once found, there could be no other ending.  
  
As a Time Lord, the Doctor didn't believe in Fate, at least, not as humans did. The timeline and the Vortex, those were real enough, and they existed in a state of natural equilibrium, seeking always to maintain their same general form. In that sense, particularly important events were resistant to change -- were "fated," in human terms. But it was all one great collection of natural laws, without any guiding intelligence. Nothing to blame, nothing to curse, only Reality to be accepted.  
  
No matter how much it hurt.  
  
The Doctor rested one hand wearily against the TARDIS's corridor wall, and she sang muted sorrow back at him -- the only other fragment of lost Gallifrey, her. She shouldn't exist any more than him, both of them pathetic, lonely anomalies . . .  
  
The impossible possibility was that if one Time Lord had escaped in this manner, there might be others. But that wasn’t something that could be sanely considered; that way lay madness, since it meant a Time Lord might exist anywhere, anywhen, with no way for the Doctor to find them.  
  
There was no peace in standing still, so the Doctor began walking again, intending to head back into the pattern-maze that was the TARDIS's deepest self. However, he found himself confronting a blank wall instead -- a blank wall containing a single door.  
  
In the absence of a better plan of action, he reached out and opened it, expecting yet another corridor.  
  
Instead, he stepped into Jack's bedroom.  
  
Jack and Rose were curled up together, asleep. The air was redolent with human pheromones and salt sweat, leaving no doubt as to how his companions had entertained themselves in his absence. The Doctor exhaled slowly, shoulders slumping. The spent sexuality on display didn't bother him, but the sight of two people resting easily in perfect intraspecific communion, _that_ cut deeply. His companions had no idea how lucky they were to have each other, to not be alone. Seeing them together made him feel tired and old and even lonelier than he had been.  
  
He patted the wall, and thought to the TARDIS, _I know what you're doing, old girl, but it won't work, not for this . . ._  
  
Before he could leave the way he'd arrived, Rose twitched and woke. Moving blearily, she raised her head, and he was caught.  
  
"Doctor . . .?" she asked, rubbing her eyes with the palm of her hand. Then, with returning awareness, "Doctor!"  
  
As if afraid he'd vanish, she fought free of the tangled sheets and tumbled out of bed. She padded swiftly to his side, completely unconcerned about her lack of clothing, all attention focused on him. Her brown eyes were wide and worried, dark brows drawn into a frown.  
  
"Are you all right?" she asked, reaching to take his hand in hers. "I've been so worried . . . ow! Your hands are like ice!" She wrapped her hand around his and began rubbing back and forth across his knuckles, sharing her human warmth as best she could. Her eyes never left his, hypnotic. "Doctor, talk to me . . ."  
  
In her presence, as always, something in him went helpless, and he had to respond. "Rose, " he began and stopped, nothing in his mind but her name.  
  
Without another word, she shifted in close and embraced him, bare skin pressing against leather and wool -- no doubt uncomfortable, but also just as certainly of no account to Rose.  
  
Over Rose's shoulder, the Doctor could see Jack, still lying in bed, propped on one elbow, watching intently, waiting to take his cue from the interaction of the other two. Always careful, always watching, that was Jack. The Doctor met his eyes briefly, then gave in and embraced Rose in turn, burying his face in the angle of her neck and the sweet-scented silk of her hair. She was so strong, yet so fragile . . . her perfect trust and unquestioning love were a gentle balm to his worn and lonely soul.  
  
More soft, padding footsteps, followed by another hand, broad and fever-warm, daring to rub the sensitive, unguarded back of the Doctor's neck.  
  
"Jeez, you _are_ freezing," was Jack's first comment, his voice unusually soft. He moved to embrace the others and buried his face in the Doctor's neck, his breath furnace-hot as he traced his lips along the soft, chill skin.  
  
Feeling like an intruder, the Doctor made to pull back. “Didn’t mean to wake you,” he said, voice low and rough. “The TARDIS thought I wanted company, but it can wait till morning.”  
  
Rose and Jack both tightened their hold. “I’d think you’d listen to your ship more often,” Jack said, rubbing his cheek along the Doctor’s in catlike affection. “She’s got good sense.”  
  
“You don’t have to go,” Rose added, looking up and running her hand gently along the grain of his close-cropped scalp. “You know we don’t mind.”  
  
He knew. They’d shared their first sexual union with him, after all. If that wasn’t an invitation, human-style, to join in any other sort of possible intimacy, he didn’t know the species half so well as he thought.  
  
They were so warm, and he was so cold . . . the nature of their species, that. He remembered seeing that damned watch lying in Jack’s hand, these two marvelous individuals so close to being captured, twisted, and warped by the undead will-to-live of another Time Lord. The memory made him shiver with suppressed horror.  
  
Rose and Jack misread his response, taking his reaction for mere physical chill.  
  
“That’s it!” Rose said, her teasing tone of voice covering concern. “We need to warm you up.” She shifted, and began trying to slip the leather jacket from the Doctor’s shoulders. Jack, swiftly picking up on her intent, moved to help. The Doctor could have resisted, but he was lonely, broken and weak, and let his armor be stripped from him.  
  
Drawn between them to the bed, he was quickly wrapped in warm human skin while soothing hands brushed and stroked, offering companionship, alien as it might be. The animal heat soaked into his muscles and brought greater relaxation than he would have thought possible; in a brief moment of clarity, he realized that cross-species seductions might not be a one-way street, this sense of belonging as intoxicating as any promise of inhuman knowledge, surely. But that sort of conceptualizing was distant and irrelevant in the timeless moment to which he’d been given an invitation.  
  
Shifting, Rose and Jack rose up to trade a kiss over the dividing barrier of his body — warming each other with doses of mutual attraction, he realized, keeping their heat and sensuality at a steady burn, for sharing, for his sake.  
  
The world contracted into a self-contained bubble of shared contact, immediate and vital. It wasn’t sexual, not truly, because the species barriers remained intact. But neither was it by any means innocent — not with Jack and Rose trading doses of pheromones back and forth in across the Doctor’s body in heady abandon, alternately stroking each other and the alien that lay between. It was its own thing, unique and shared, blending into dreamless rest, a silent trust digging deeply and binding them together on levels too deep to fathom, levels deeper than any frost might touch or Void divide.  
  



End file.
